Unnecessary Deregulation?
The Des Moines Register published an article on the latest proposal by the Bush Administration to pull back environmental restrictions on ethanol plants – but is it really necessary?
The ethanol industry argues that the government needs to ease air-pollution rules so bigger plants can be built to meet the soaring demand for the fuel additive.But the existing rules — which the Bush administration wants to ease — haven’t stopped at least one Iowa plant from moving forward with a major expansion plan.
Golden Grain Energy, a farmer-controlled plant at Mason City, expects to get a federal permit in time to start construction next month on its $43 million expansion project. The bigger plant could produce 150 million gallons of ethanol per year, which would make it one of Iowa’s largest facilities.
Because of the pollution rules, Golden Grain has had to buy a $40,000 street sweeper to control dust around the outside of the plant – dust counts as a pollutant. It has also spent $45,000 on the outside experts needed to handle the application process.
“The industry is already growing at an alarmingly fast pace without (the rule change),” said Walter Wendland, president and chief executive officer of Golden Grain. “Do I feel the industry needs this to grow? Absolutely not.”
Wendland agrees with the reasoning behind the rule change, but he worries that it will encourage the shift toward larger plants that are controlled by outside investors rather than farmers. Concerns over ownership of ethanol plants grew last month when an Australian company sought to buy control of a farmer-owned plant in Lakota, Ia.
Mr. Wendland is exactly correct: the only people clamoring for this type of deregulation are the people that will live nowhere near the ethanol plants they own. (We’ve seen this in terms of hog lots, cattle feedlots, etc. – when does it stop?)
- Sousy